Today: Team Trump's Fire and Ice

May 07, 2018 | 8:00 AM

The combative Rudy Giuliani TV tour continues, while a level-headed lawyer joins a White House under siege.

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Team Trump's Fire and Ice

As President Trump's attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani has come out with rhetorical guns a-blazing — not just on the Stormy Daniels payment, but also on the Russia investigation. On Sunday, Giuliani said that Trump might invoke his 5th Amendment right to guard against self-incrimination and that Trump would not "have to" respond to a subpoena, if one were to come from the special counsel. He alluded to none other than former President Clinton, who resisted a subpoena in the Monica Lewinsky investigation but ultimately agreed to voluntarily go under questioning. While Giuliani has been generating the headlines, another lawyer — Emmet Flood, who was on Clinton's legal team during the impeachment process — is more quietly getting to work. Unlike Giuliani and lawyer Jay Sekulow, who represent Trump personally, Flood will be responsible for shielding the institution of the presidency and the White House from legal problems.

More Politics

-- Gina Haspel, Trump's nominee to become the next CIA director, sought to withdraw her nomination Friday after some White House officials worried that her role in the interrogation of terrorism suspects could prevent her confirmation by the Senate, four senior U.S. officials told the Washington Post.

Democratic candidates Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa may be the biggest fundraisers in the race to be California's next governor, but they're far from the only choices. John Chiang, another Democrat, has been touting his battles as state controller with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a decade ago. On the Republican side, businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen are the leading contenders, but neither was able to win the endorsement of the state Republican Party at its convention in San Diego this weekend.

A Hellscape on the Big Island

More than two dozen homes on the island of Hawaii have been destroyed, as lava flows from eruptions at the Kilauea volcano. Toxic sulfur dioxide gas is also at lethal concentrations near the fissures. And more than 1,000 earthquakes have been generated over the last week, including a magnitude 6.9 earthquake midday Friday. Here's the latest.

One of the last things many high schoolers want to talk about is sex. Sexually transmitted diseases, even less so. Yet the prevalence of STDs in L.A. County is skyrocketing. That's why health officials are trying new approaches to education on the issue, including an all-day event called Spring Into Love. Of particular concern is how social factors such as income, education and race play into the spread of disease.

Paul Simon has a reputation for being aloof, but former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn, who's written a book about Simon, says it's more a matter of being focused: "That's the thing people don't understand: If Bob Dylan is sitting here, and you sat down with him and started talking, he wouldn't sit there and say, 'Hey, how ya doin'!" He's got his own world. And Paul, if he's thinking about a song, he's not going to talk to you; Neil Young, he's not going to talk to you. Now Bruce [Springsteen], he would try to talk to you. [Laughs] Bono would try to talk to you."

NATION-WORLD

-- In France, Trump was accused of showing "shameful" disrespect for the victims of a 2015 series of terrorist attacks by suggesting the bloodshed might have been prevented if the French carried guns.

-- Lebanon's first national elections in nine years were marked by a tepid turnout, reflecting voter frustration over endemic corruption and a stagnant economy.

-- New radar scans of King Tutankhamen's burial chamber have provided conclusive evidence that there are no hidden rooms inside, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry says.

BUSINESS

-- The Trump economic team's talks in Beijing proved to be bewildering and, for many in both countries and beyond, worrisome because of an apparent disconnect on trade between the U.S. and China.

-- For most of the last decade, Americans have enjoyed a rare trifecta of soaring stock values, cheap loans and consumer prices that rarely rose. But the party is coming to an end.

Hang ten, cowboy? The world's hottest surf spot this weekend was 100 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean and surrounded by fields and cattle. An artificial wave pool known as the WSL Surf Ranch in Lemoore made its public debut with a contest among some of the sport's top competitors. Its perfect waves represent the culmination of a dream of surfing star Kelly Slater. For many, they're a little too perfect.